E272 Marina Ferreira

Inside the remote desert resort redefining hospitality, one cocktail at a time

Guest Bio

Raised between Brazil and New York, Marina Ferreira developed a deep appreciation for how food, drink, and hospitality bring people together. With more than 12 years in the industry, she's built a career rooted in creativity, connection, and guest experience — growing from host to beverage director along the way. She currently leads the bar team at Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel in California's high desert, where she builds intimate hospitality experiences and thoughtful cocktail programs. Known for mentoring her bar teams and for believing that any great conversation can be elevated by a well-made martini, Marina blends operational know-how with an artistic approach to beverage development.

Episode Summary

Marina joins the show to talk about her unconventional path into the industry and her current chapter running the beverage program at one of the most remote hotels in Southern California. She digs into what it's like building a cocktail program in a town with no grocery store, why she came in as an SOP-and-systems consultant before stepping into the beverage manager role, and how a dive bar bartending job taught her more about hospitality than any craft cocktail bar ever did. The conversation covers her early restaurant-industry upbringing, her time in New York City bars, opening Botanica, running community events in San Diego, and what she's building next at Jacumba — including a new mocktail program and an upcoming cocktail menu overhaul.

Key Topics

- Life in the middle of nowhere: Living and working in Jacumba Hot Springs, where groceries require a 45-minute to hour-long drive and deliveries only come twice a week

- The history of Jacumba Hot Springs: From a railroad boomtown to natural mineral springs to the hotel and bathhouse standing today

- Consultant to beverage manager: How a three-month SOP-focused consulting contract turned into a full-time role

- Building for a destination, not a neighborhood bar: Designing a beverage program around hotel guests, pool bars, weddings, and cabana service rather than walk-in traffic

- Launching a mocktail program: Using adaptogens (Aplos, lion's mane, African black pepper) to build a non-alcoholic menu that doesn't feel like an afterthought

- Growing up in restaurants: Marina's parents' own service-industry and entrepreneurial backgrounds, and how that shaped her path

- Brazilian heritage and flavor: How growing up identifying plants, herbs, and berries in Brazil shows up in her cocktail-building today

- From hosting to bartending in NYC: Her early days on the Upper West Side and how watching a bartender work pulled her behind the bar

- The dive bar lesson: Why working at a no-frills dive bar taught her more about real hospitality and conversation than any cocktail bar did

- Building Botanica: Opening a genever-focused bar from scratch, learning to manage and hire for the first time, and the toll — and growth — that came with it

- Running industry events in San Diego: Building a 250-person industry group chat to coordinate events and avoid oversaturating the same night

- Letting go of ego: Why she now actively seeks out feedback from people earlier in their careers and treats every conversation as a chance to learn something

- What's next at Jacumba: Plans for a new cocktail menu, more community takeover events, and growing programming to bring people back to the property

Guest Links

- Marina Ferreira (Instagram): @marinimartinisd

- Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel (Instagram): @jacumbahotspringshotel

- Jacumba Hot Springs Presents (events/concerts/pop-ups): @jacumbapresents

A big thank you to Jean-Marc Dykes of Imbiblia. Imbiblia is a cocktail app for bartenders, restaurants and cocktail lovers alike and built by a bartender with more than a decade of experience behind the bar. Several of the features includes the ability to create your own Imbiblia Recipe Cards with the Imbiblia Cocktail Builder, rapidly select ingredients, garnishes, methods and workshop recipes with a unique visual format, search by taste, using flavour profiles unique to Imbiblia, share recipes publicly plus many more......Imbiblia - check it out!

Contact the host Kypp Saunders by email at kyppsaunders@gmail.com for products from Elora Distilling and Noble Estates.

Links

kyppsaunders@gmail.com

@sugarrunbar

@the_industry_podcast

email us: info@theindustrypodcast.club